coolbeans, 2/1

I thought that the field trip downtown to look at the Bank of America building and the Orlando Courthouse was a good way for the class to observe postmodern aspects of architecture. It was cool to see that even a city like Orlando has some good examples of postmodern architecture. It is interesting how buildings can take on these characteristics and it changes our perception of a building when we look deeper into the aspects of the architecture that the building is comprised of. If I had just been walking in downtown Orlando on a casual stroll and not been thinking about these things I probably would not have even noticed the buildings, or just casually have thought to myself, “Oh, that’s kind of a cool looking building”. Going downtown with the list of all the examples of postmodern architecture really helped us to try to look for these characteristics and think more about the buildings than just giving them a casual glance-over. I especially thought it was interesting how at night when the lights are on, the Courthouse has the appearance of a judiciary chair. Whether or not the architect intentionally planned it out that way or not is unknown but it was just kind of a cool example of anamnesis. Another thing that I liked was the Lynx bus stop that showed urbane urbanism. I thought it was nice that the bus stop had an old-time vibe to it because most bus stops that I see tend to be kind of ugly or just a simple bench on the side of the road. Instead of detracting from the rest of the area and sticking out like an eyesore, the bus stop stuck out as something that looked like it was from the past, and sort of contributed something good to the overall appearance of the area.